Customer-led growth | Georgiana Laudi (Forget The Funnel)

Georgiana Laudi is the co-founder and CEO of a consulting agency called Forget The Funnel, where she helps SaaS companies scale and improve conversion rates through customer-led growth. She’s also a marketing and growth advisor to companies like MarketerHire, SparkToro, and Sprout Social. Previously, she was the VP of Marketing at Unbounce and has worked in growth marketing for over 20 years. In today’s episode, Gia speaks about how to identify your ideal customer, how to map their user flows in order to find the biggest growth opportunities, and examples of product changes she’s recommended that have led to the largest growth unlocks. She shares the exact process she works through with founders to uncover opportunities, as well as how to increase subscriptions and retention for SaaS businesses.
Find the full transcript here: www.lennyspodcast.com/custome...
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Where to find Georgiana Laudi:
• Twitter: / ggiiaa
• LinkedIn: / georgianalaudi
• Website: www.forgetthefunnel.com/
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: / lennysan
• LinkedIn: / lennyrachitsky
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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:
• Amplitude: amplitude.com/
• Athletic Greens: athleticgreens.com/lenny
• Maven: www.maven.com/lenny
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Referenced:
• How SaaS Marketers Can Hold High-Impact Customer Research Interviews: www.forgetthefunnel.com/resou...
• Jobs To Be Done: Email Invite Template & Interview Questions by Forget The Funnel: docs.google.com/document/d/18...
• The Growth Framework for Customer-Obsessed SaaS Teams: www.forgetthefunnel.com/resou...
• Project Snow White: marker.medium.com/what-seven-...[…]0White,-was%20one%20of
• Startupfest: startupfestival.com/for-start...
• Pirate Metrics: fourweekmba.com/pirate-metrics/
• How Airbnb Proved That Storytelling Is the Most Important Skill in Design: www.inc.com/yazin-akkawi/the-...
• Jobs to Be Done: jtbd.info/
• Demand-Side Sales 101: www.amazon.com/Demand-Side-Sa...
• When Coffee and Kale Compete: www.amazon.com/When-Coffee-Ka...
• Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning So Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It: www.amazon.com/Obviously-Awes...
• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products: www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Bui...
• Forget the Funnel: www.forgetthefunnel.com/custo...
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals: www.amazon.com/Four-Thousand-...
• Shine Theory: www.shinetheory.com/
• April Dunford’s website: www.aprildunford.com/
• SparkToro: sparktoro.com/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Georgiana’s background
(07:03) Why funnels are antiquated
(08:52) Better positioning and messaging to find the ideal customer
(13:59) How Gia was inspired by Airbnb’s storytelling
(19:23) How to analyze what’s successful and what to invest in
(21:54) The ideal customer to learn from
(26:37) How to choose which customer job to prioritize
(32:21) Value moments in the customer relationship
(36:45) Applying customer feedback
(44:40) Metrics for measuring the customer’s meaningful engagement
(49:45) What’s included in the messaging and positioning guidebook
(51:15) Tips for messaging
(54:13) Example of a customer job at SparkToro
(55:58) What is the Jobs to Be Done framework?
(59:50) Lightning round
(1:04:18) How Gia manages her time
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Production and marketing by penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [e-mail].

[@dappledaisykiara]

Lenny I love this- great conversations and insights Just one note- the music during the ads drown out the speech. Hope that helps for future.

[@wr3tch3dwr3tch3d]

This is a gold piece to listen to, thanks a lot for sharing it! Would you think of adding questions or dividing the video into sections in the future? I know this video is super helpful as a whole but I think it'd be quite helpful if we could see the questions/topics and be able to find the most interesting parts for our painpoints :)

[@LennysPodcast]

I always add show notes to the description :) Simply scroll down to find the topics and click on any of the timestamps to jump to that part of the episode! Enjoy

[@haakonschankestrmsnes8465]

Really love the episode. She said that she was going to leave some links for messaging templates. I can’t find them in the description😊

[@godswillaugustine7719]

Can we have the messaging guide. Thats all we are asking for @ lenny

[@GeorgianaLaudi]

Hi! Sorry for the slow reply here. Here are some resources to help kick things off: This one about how to run high-impact customer research interviews: www.forgetthefunnel.com/resources/saas-customer-research-interviews (plus the JTBD Interview Questions & Email Script [Google Doc] that goes with it) And this one on customer journey mapping www.forgetthefunnel.com/resources/saas-customer-journey-mapping There’s also a ton more free in the resource library OR if you’re really ready for the step-by-step, you might want to check out our book (it's in pre-sale only until EOD today Oct 28): www.forgetthefunnel.com/customer-led-growth/book-pre-sale Hope it helps!

[@PokriPoki]

Very good interview, thanks for sharing. One small piece of feedback to Laudi - please invest in a higher resolution webcam. This will help you in building your personal brand and position yourself as a champion of technology (the iWatch is helping, the improved cam will hhelp some more) 😊

[@LennysPodcast]

This was actually my (Lenny's) fault! We had to record using Zoom due to technical difficulties, and so the resolution ended up not being as great 😢

[@boxjump1007]

@lenny - can you explain this part - customer-led KPI where Georgiana is talking about Sparktoro's 5+ searches and 1+ list under First value and 10+ searches - what does this mean?

[@dappledaisykiara]

I also wondered the same thing! hope he gets back to this

[@GainFitnessSystems]

Pirate metrics are so cringe 😬